At least 15 civilians killed on Friday in Russian airstrikes on Deir Ezzor as regime forces broke into the eastern province for the first time since 2014, a monitor and activists said, after seizing territory from ISIS.
Activist Firas Allawi told Zaman al-Wasl that Russia’s warplanes had pounded al-Mohaimdiya village in the western countryside of Deir Ezzor, leaving 18 people dead, mostly women and children. Two more people were also killed in regime-held areas by ISIS mortar rounds.
The regime army and allied militias took part of the city and the adjacent military airport from the Islamic State, but ISIS still holds the vast desert province and most of the provincial capital.
"Backed by Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi fighters, the Syrian army entered Deir Ezzor province from the southeast, near the Iraqi border," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He said the pro-government forces had advanced eight kilometres (five miles) into the province.
They are now just 12 kilometres (less than eight miles) from the key T2 oil pump, which lies on a pipeline extending from Iraq through central Syria to its western coastline.
In addition to capturing key oil fields and infrastructure, regime forces are keen to break ISIS' stranglehold on regime-held districts of Deir Ezzor city.
An estimated 100,000 civilians are living under ISIS siege.
Earlier this month, Syrian government forces reached the eastern border with Iraq for the first time since 2015.
By Friday, according to the Observatory, army troops were in control of an 85-kilometre (53-mile) stretch of the frontier.
The regime's advance has created tensions along the border, where U.S.-led coalition forces are using a garrison to train anti-ISIS fighters.
On June 8, a U.S. warplane shot down a drone after it dropped munitions near At-Tanaf, after other incidents where the coalition fired on pro-regime forces on the ground as they approached the garrison.
And last Sunday, a U.S. fighter jet downed a Syrian government warplane in the country's north for the first time in the six-year conflict.
More than 470,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before turning into a complex war involving regional and international players.
